No Arabic abstract
Observations reveal a `bulk flow in the local Universe which is faster and extends to much larger scales than is expected around a typical observer in the standard $Lambda$CDM cosmology. This is expected to result in a scale-dependent dipolar modulation of the acceleration of the expansion rate inferred from observations of objects within the bulk flow. From a maximum-likelihood analysis of the Joint Lightcurve Analysis (JLA) catalogue of Type Ia supernovae we find that the deceleration parameter, in addition to a small monopole, indeed has a much bigger dipole component aligned with the CMB dipole which falls exponentially with redshift $z$: $q_0 = q_mathrm{m} + vec{q}_mathrm{d}.hat{n}exp(-z/S)$. The best fit to data yields $q_mathrm{d} = -8.03$ and $S = 0.0262~(Rightarrow d sim 100~mathrm{Mpc})$, rejecting isotropy ($q_mathrm{d} = 0$) with $3.9sigma$ statistical significance, while $q_mathrm{m} = -0.157$ and consistent with no acceleration ($q_mathrm{m} = 0$) at $1.4sigma$. Thus the cosmic acceleration deduced from supernovae may be an artefact of our being non-Copernican observers, rather than evidence for a dominant component of `dark energy in the Universe.
The standard model of cosmology is founded on the basis that the expansion rate of the universe is accelerating at present --- as was inferred originally from the Hubble diagram of Type Ia supernovae. There exists now a much bigger database of supernovae so we can perform rigorous statistical tests to check whether these standardisable candles indeed indicate cosmic acceleration. Taking account of the empirical procedure by which corrections are made to their absolute magnitudes to allow for the varying shape of the light curve and extinction by dust, we find, rather surprisingly, that the data are still quite consistent with a constant rate of expansion.
The possible slowing down of cosmic acceleration was widely studied. However, the imposition of dark energy parametrization brought some tensions. In our recent paper, we test this possibility using a model-independent method, Gaussian processes. However, the reason of generating these tensions is still closed. In the present paper, we analyse the derivative of deceleration parameter to solve the problems. The reconstruction of the derivative again suggests that no slowing down of acceleration is presented within 95% C.L. from current observational data. We then deduce its constraint on dark energy. The corresponding constraint clearly reveals the reason of tension between different models in previous work. We also study the essential reason of why current data cannot convincingly measure the slowing down of acceleration. The constraints indicate that most of current data are not in the allowed region.
Type Ia Supernovae (SNe Ia) are powerful standardizable candles for constraining cosmological models and provided the first evidence of the accelerated expansion of the universe. Their precision derives from empirical correlations, now measured from $>1000$ SNe Ia, between their luminosities, light-curve shapes, colors and most recently with the stellar mass of their host galaxy. As mass correlates with other galaxy properties, alternative parameters have been investigated to improve SN Ia standardization though none have been shown to significantly alter the determination of cosmological parameters. We re-examine a recent claim, based on 34 SN Ia in nearby passive host galaxies, of a 0.05 mag/Gyr dependence of standardized SN Ia luminosity on host age which if extrapolated to higher redshifts, would be a bias up to 0.25 mag, challenging the inference of dark energy. We reanalyze this sample of hosts using both the original method and a Bayesian hierarchical model and find after a fuller accounting of the uncertainties the significance of a dependence on age to be $leq2sigma$ and $sim1sigma$ after the removal of a single poorly-sampled SN Ia. To test the claim that a trend seen in old stellar populations can be applied to younger ages, we extend our analysis to a larger sample which includes young hosts. We find the residual dependence of host age (after all standardization typically employed for cosmological measurements) to be consistent with zero for 254 SNe Ia from the Pantheon sample, ruling out the large but low significance trend seen in passive hosts.
We investigate the creation of cold dark matter (CCDM) cosmology as an alternative to explain the cosmic acceleration. Particular attention is given to the evolution of density perturbations and constraints coming from recent observations. By assuming negligible effective sound speed we compare CCDM predictions with redshift-space-distortion based f(z) sigma_8(z) measurements. We identify a subtle issue associated with which contribution in the density contrast should be used in this test and then show that the CCDM results are the same as those obtained with LambdaCDM. These results are then contrasted with the ones obtained at the background level. For the background tests we have used type Ia supernovae data (Union 2.1 compilation) in combination with baryonic acoustic oscillations and cosmic microwave background observations and also measurements of the Hubble parameter at different redshifts. As a consequence of the studies we have performed at both the background and perturbation levels, we explicitly show that CCDM is observationally degenerate with respect to LambdaCDM (dark degeneracy). The need to overcome the lack of a fundamental microscopic basis for the CCDM is the major challenge for this kind of model.
We study the effect of an explicit interaction between two scalar fields components describing dark matter in the context of a recent proposal framework for interaction. We find that, even assuming a very small coupling, it is sufficient to explain the observational effects of a cosmological constant, and also overcome the problems of the $Lambda$CDM model without assuming an exotic dark energy.